FRANÇOISE PASCAL, MARIE-CATHERINE DESJARDINS, ANTOINETTE DESHOULIÈRES,

AND CATHERINE DURAND

Challenges to Traditional Authority: Plays by French Women Authors,

1650–1700

•

Edited and translated by

PERRY GETHNER

Iter Academic PressToronto, Ontario

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance StudiesTempe, Arizona

2015

Iter Academic PressTel: 416/978–7074 Email: iter@utoronto.caFax: 416/978–1668 Web: www.itergateway.org

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance StudiesTel: 480/965–5900 Email: mrts@acmrs.orgFax: 480/965–1681 Web: acmrs.org

© 2015 Iter, Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University.All rights reserved.Printed in Canada.

Iter and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies gratefully acknowledge the gener-ous support of James E. Rabil, in memory of Scottie W. Rabil, toward the publication of this book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Challenges to traditional authority : plays by French women authors, 1650-1700 / edited and trans-lated by Perry Gethner.

pages cm. -- (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies ; 477) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe ; The Toronto Series, 36) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-86698-530-7 (alk. paper)1. French drama--Women authors. 2. French drama--17th century. I. Gethner, Perry, editor, translator. PQ1220.C48 2015 842’.40809287--dc23 2014049921

Cover illustration: Selene and Endymion, c.1630 (oil on canvas), Poussin, Nicolas (1594–1665) / Detroit Institute of Arts, USA / Founders Society purchase, General Membership Fund / Bridgeman Images DTR114646.

Cover design: Maureen Morin, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Typesetting and production: Iter Academic Press.

1

Introduction

The Other Voice

It will no doubt come as a surprise to many that women writers existed in France long before our own day, that they cultivated nearly all the known genres, that in some cases they were highly regarded, that in certain respects they were innova-tors, and that many of their works can still be read with pleasure today. Until quite recently, only a handful of literary scholars knew that French women authors in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were active in such fields as drama, narrative and philosophical poetry, and all branches of fiction and non-fiction. While critics have recognized that some women composed best-selling novels, only one of them, Mme de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves, has tradition-ally been considered worth reading. Indeed, scholars increasingly are coming to realize that many literary historians of the last two centuries made what seems like a concerted effort to devalue women writers and ignore their works.1

For numerous reasons the works of French women playwrights deserve to be rediscovered. Drama was considered the most prestigious branch of literature during the early modern period, and the fact that some women cultivated dramat-ic art indicates that they viewed themselves as fully integrated into the cultural life of France. The range of their accomplishments is particularly impressive: women wrote in every dramatic form popular in that era, and in some cases they helped to initiate new genres or subgenres. Most of all, many of these authors brought a distinctively female perspective to the subjects they treated. For example, they stood up for the rights and dignity of women, condemned male tyranny and cor-ruption, denounced social injustices, and imagined new possibilities for social and political organization.

Only in the last few decades has a serious attempt been made to reedit works by these unjustly neglected writers. Even less effort has been given to mak-ing these works available in English. The current volume, which constitutes a supplement to my earlier English-language anthology,2 should help to remedy this situation and allow scholars to place French women playwrights in dialogue with

1. See Joan DeJean, Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Faith E. Beasley, Salons, History, and the Creation of 17th-Century France: Mastering Memory (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006).

2. Perry Gethner, trans., The Lunatic Lover and Other Plays by French Women of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994) comprises six works by Françoise Pascal and Mme de Villedieu (both represented in the current volume by other plays), Anne de La Roche-Guilhen, Catherine Bernard, Marie-Anne Barbier, and Françoise de Graffigny.

2 PERRY GETHNER

their male counterparts in France, their female counterparts in other European countries, and the general culture that they helped to enrich.

The reception accorded to the French-language editions I have published of works by women playwrights attests to considerable enthusiasm for this corpus. Plays by women have been successfully used in the classroom for a variety of pur-poses: intellectual history (representing what women in the early modern period thought about their society and culture), literary history (how the contributions of women dramatists interface with, or contrast with, those of their male colleagues, especially in cases where a male author and a female author treat the same or similar themes), or women’s studies (how the plays interface with the writings of women in other genres and/or in other countries).3 Some of these plays, especially the short comedies, can easily be staged in student productions. But, most of all, the best of these plays, including the works included in the current collection, are thought provoking and enjoyable to read.

Historical Context

The contributions of French women to drama have long been neglected, even though the overwhelming majority of their works were published and a large number were performed, sometimes with considerable success. There are a few isolated cases of women who wrote plays in the sixteenth century, but they never constituted a tradition and their work received little attention.4 This is hardly sur-prising, given that the sixteenth century in France was a chaotic time, dominated by religious strife and both foreign and civil wars—developments that interfered with the evolution of professional theatrical companies and with the creation of a distinctive tradition. At the same time, the humanist movement promoted a new interest in the drama of classical antiquity while disparaging the forms of medieval drama that audiences continued to enjoy. All four of the known female playwrights of that century dabbled in drama only intermittently, preferring to cultivate poetry or prose, and none of them seems to have had any ties with pro-fessional performers. Two were aristocrats (Queen Marguerite de Navarre, better known as a religious poet and author of one of the finest novella collections of the

3. On the possibilities for classroom use, see Perry Gethner, “Women and the Theatrical Tradition,” in Teaching Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers, ed. Faith E. Beasley (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011), 84–91.

4. For a more in-depth historical account, see the general introductions to the individual volumes of the anthology Théâtre de femmes de l’Ancien Régime, ed. Aurore Evain, Perry Gethner, and Henriette Goldwyn, 3 vols. to date of 5 projected (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 2006–11); and English Showalter, Jr., “Writing off the Stage: Women Authors and Eighteenth-Century Theater,” Yale French Studies 75 (1988): 95–111. See also the website accompanying the anthology above: Aurore Evain, Théâtre de femmes de l’Ancien Régime. http://www.theatredefemmes-ancien-regime.org.

3Introduction

Renaissance, and Catherine de Parthenay, a duchess and religious poet), while the others were active in private literary gatherings (Louise Labé in Lyon, who spe-cialized in love poems, and Catherine Des Roches in Poitiers, a poet of feminist leanings who hosted a salon with her mother). Their purpose in composing plays was to provide entertainment for their friends or members of their entourage, in addition to allowing for self-expression. Apart from one of Parthenay’s bibli-cal tragedies, staged by the Protestant community at La Rochelle around 1574 (presumably as an act of solidarity or defiance in the wake of a notorious mas-sacre of Huguenots), none of their plays was intended for public performance. Nonetheless, all these authors except Parthenay had their dramatic works pub-lished, and it is possible that some were posthumously staged.

These texts hardly seem feminist today, but in some cases the choice of themes and the treatment of the female characters are suggestive. For example, Marguerite satirizes what she considers improper religious attitudes and practic-es, often using young women as models of genuine devotion, and she presents the Virgin Mary as a model of intellectual distinction as well as maternal tenderness. Labé uses the allegorical figures of Cupid and Folly to rehabilitate the irrational aspect of amorous passion, which she allows women, as well as men, to express openly. Parthenay’s lost tragedy, judging from the title, exalted the biblical heroine Judith, who slew the enemy of her people and ended the siege of her city. Some of Des Roches’s philosophical dialogues, which seem to have been conceived as playlets, feature discussions about the desirability of educating girls and cultivat-ing their talents.

Only at the midpoint of the seventeenth century do we find women play-wrights in significant numbers and who managed to win both popular and criti-cal recognition. Curiously, only a single play by a woman is known to have been written during the first half of the century, and that work, Cinnatus et Camma by Dorothée de Croy (surviving in a manuscript dated 1637), a curious hybrid of me-dieval and Renaissance traditions, was never published or performed. But around 1650 women playwrights came to prominence; all of them published their works, and many of their plays were publicly staged. There are many reasons why the change happened at precisely that time. Perhaps the most crucial is that the drama acquired a new respectability during the second quarter of the century, owing to the strong support of the prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu. The government increasingly gave encouragement to gifted young playwrights, sponsored some of the professional companies that came to be based in Paris, and made the goal of perfecting the drama one of the tasks of the newly formed French Academy, whose original purpose was to standardize and regularize the French language. As plays became more refined in both style and subject matter, and as both aris-tocrats and well-educated members of the middle class came to look upon the playhouse as a privileged form of serious entertainment, more people attended

4 PERRY GETHNER

performances, read plays in print, and discussed them at social gatherings. Mean-while, new and improved playhouses were constructed, and starting in the 1640s new types of stage machines were introduced, allowing for elaborate special ef-fects. The appearance of an unusually gifted group of playwrights, eager to please noble patrons and sophisticated audiences while displaying their worthiness of official recognition as authors (at a time when the modern notion of author was coming into its own) likewise contributed to the new enthusiasm for drama as the most valued branch of French literary activity.5

The high level of excellence achieved by French playwrights, which would continue throughout the second half of the century, led to the widespread belief that the French had developed a national dramatic tradition equaling that of the Greeks and Romans. One no longer needed a solid background in the literature and languages of classical antiquity to feel capable of attempting a tragedy or comedy; it sufficed to be acquainted with the dramatic masterpieces and theoreti-cal treatises written in French. Indeed, many of the works authored by women were intended to be read in dialogue with recognized masterpieces by male play-wrights. Since the critical debates were widely publicized and since it was claimed that many of the basic dramaturgical principles were derived from eternal and universal reason, aspiring playwrights could start off having a basic familiarity with their craft.6 Following consecrated models was an especially useful strategy for women playwrights, because it allowed them to know in advance what sorts of things the public would accept or reject. However, it also meant that subversive elements had to be carefully camouflaged so as not to offend the audience. (How this was done will be discussed in the introductions to the individual plays.)

Another factor contributing to the rise of French drama was the promi-nence of the salons. Informal literary gatherings had met in the private homes of aristocrats or wealthy bourgeois since the sixteenth century, but during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries these became more numerous and presti-gious, attracted a greater percentage of the leading intellectual figures, and more openly encouraged the participation of women in all aspects of literary activity. Women could participate in the increasingly public debates over dramatic theory and over the worth of individual plays. They could provide active support for authors they liked or join in attacks against authors whom they opposed, as hap-pened when Antoinette Deshoulières composed a satirical poem as part of a cabal against Racine’s Phèdre. In some cases, friends from the salon actively encouraged

5. See Alain Viala, Naissance de l’écrivain (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1985).

6. The standard treatments of what is commonly referred to as French classical theory are René Bray, La Formation de la doctrine classique en France (Paris: Nizet, 1927; repr. 1968); and Jacques Scherer, La Dramaturgie classique en France (Paris: Nizet, 1950). Among the recent studies in English, arguably the most thoughtful is John D. Lyons, Kingdom of Disorder: The Theory of Tragedy in Classical France (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1999).

5Introduction

the efforts of an aspiring woman writer; this sometimes took the form of find-ing a male mentor willing to pass on some of his own experience.7 Villedieu was mentored by the abbé François Hédelin d’Aubignac, unsuccessful as a playwright but highly influential as a writer of dramatic theory, while, in the final years of the century, Marie-Anne Barbier would be mentored by the respected playwright Edme Boursault, himself a protégé of the great Pierre Corneille. During a period when women were not allowed into the universities, and indeed when debates raged over whether girls should receive any form of education, the salons func-tioned as the equivalent of educational institutions, exposing women of serious intellectual interests to significant books and authors and encouraging them to voice their own opinions on everything.

As many contemporaries noted (some of them approvingly, but by no means all), cultivated women played an important role in shaping French literary taste, both in terms of subject matter and style. At least partially in deference to an in-creasingly refined and supportive female audience, the language in tragedy and in the more serious types of comedy was largely purged of vulgarity and colloquial-ism, while erotic or misogynistic remarks and gestures came to be frowned upon. Women helped to impose a preference for a simple and clear style that was also harmonious and moving, free of pedantry and esoteric classical allusions. Male characters in drama and fiction were expected to behave with unfailing politeness to women, and virtuous male protagonists had to speak of love in respectful and flowery language, as well as adhering to a code of conduct based on the values of chivalric novels. Indeed, the central role of love in French tragedies, which by the middle of the seventeenth century had become a nearly obligatory component, was often attributed by contemporaries to the demands of the female element of the public.8 Love was, however, far from a useless ornament in the plots, since the hero’s selfless devotion to his lady entails an obligation to perform valiant deeds in order to prove himself worthy, while in numerous plays the hero’s internal conflict is caused by a clash between the demands of his heart and those imposed by other forces, such as family, nation, or religion.

7. There has been a major renewal of interest in the salons in recent decades. In addition to the volumes by Joan DeJean and Faith Beasley cited above, see Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); Myriam Dufour-Maître, Les Précieuses: Naissance des femmes de lettres en France au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2008); Delphine Denis, Le Parnasse galant: Institution d’une catégorie littéraire au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2001); Anne Duggan, Salonnières, Furies, and Fairies: The Politics of Gender and Cultural Change in Absolutist France (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005). The best overall study of how women in France became integrated into its intellectual life is Linda Timmermans, L’Accès des femmes à la culture sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Champion, 2005).

8. See, for example, Carine Barbafieri, Atrée et Céladon: La galanterie dans le théâtre tragique de la France classique (1634–1702) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006).

6 PERRY GETHNER

Of course, it would be a huge exaggeration to suggest, as did some literary theorists of the era, that the female portion of the literary public devised and imposed new rules on an unwilling male literary establishment. The “feminine in-fluence” was in fact part of a shift in taste that emanated primarily from the salons and incorporated ideas and values that were likewise shared by a sizable percent-age of male intellectuals. That shift, linked to a broader social phenomenon that is now generally known as galanterie, impacted all the arts, as well as real life.9 As a code of conduct, it came to be embraced primarily by the aristocracy and the up-per bourgeoisie as a means of displaying personal refinement and of belonging to an elite. This aspect of the code covered such external markers of status as extreme attention to dress, comportment, and rituals of polite interaction. Sociability, es-pecially at the salons, required a variety of skills: speaking clearly, correctly, and persuasively; possessing a broad general knowledge without sounding pompous or erudite; being an attentive listener; displaying wit and a general good sense of humor; having good taste in evaluating artistic productions; showing respect to people of merit, regardless of rank; and, most relevant here, showing deference to the ladies present. Plays and novels written by or for habitués of the salons tended to reflect these qualities in the language and conduct of the characters.

As an ethical category, galanterie was linked to the code of honnêteté—a term that meant at the time something closer to “good breeding” or “refinement of conduct,” as well as adherence to moral standards. Curiously, galanterie was not exclusively linked to ethical standards; indeed, in later generations, it would increasingly denote sexual license. It is also true that honnêteté could become self-serving and function as a marker for aristocratic snobbery. But as used in literary works during the second half of the seventeenth century, both terms typically functioned as ideals designed to inspire admiration and emulation. As a moral standard, honnêteté was founded on secular principles, rather than religious, and it manifested itself essentially through a refined instinct or sensitivity for the well-being of others, combined with a sense of personal honor that required one to conform to the standards set by society for one’s rank and position, even if that necessitated sacrificing one’s life or happiness for the welfare of others. Once again, this code of conduct would come to be expected for the virtuous protago-nists in literary works.

However, whereas honnêteté was primarily an ethical and social ideal, galanterie also had a crucial aesthetic component. For salon society, the most important goal of literary works was to provide pleasure, and this pleasure was to derive from such characteristics as diversity, wit, elegance and refinement of language, and a strong emphasis on decorum. One of the consequences was the encouragement of generic hybridity, in other words, works with heterogeneous

9. The best overall treatment of galanterie in its various cultural and historical manifestations is Alain Viala, La France galante (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008).

7Introduction

components (letters or narratives that mixed prose with verse; novels containing intercalated poems or stories; plays punctuated by episodes of music and dance; reworking of material derived from popular tradition, such as fairy tales and ghost stories, etc.). In the present volume, this hybridity is apparent in Pascal’s use of the machine play form, with its use of music and special effects; in Villedieu’s lighthearted dedicatory epistle that alternates between verse and prose and un-conventionally places the concluding material at the beginning; and in Durand’s inclusion of her short plays as an appendix to a novel (itself a generic hybrid with much intercalated material).

By the end of the seventeenth century, although intellectuals differed vehe-mently about whether modern developments in the arts and sciences constituted progress, there was general agreement that the French had already achieved a high level of success in the arts and letters, and especially in drama. The master-pieces from that century, rapidly canonized and widely read and revived, were seen as a cherished patrimony that helped to serve Louis XIV’s avowed goal of making France the cultural capital of Europe. During the course of the eighteenth century, increasing numbers of female intellectuals came to believe that they had an obligation not merely to appreciate that patrimony as readers and spectators, but also to contribute to it as authors. It is no accident that over the course of what became known as the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, one of the sharp-est disagreements concerned the role that women were deemed fit to play in the country’s cultural life, both as writers and as influential members of the public. The Ancients were strongly opposed to female participation and could on occa-sion produce openly misogynistic texts, whereas the Moderns valued educated and cultivated women and felt that their increasing role as arbiters of taste was beneficial. It should be noted, however, that even the male champions of the Mod-ern cause would not qualify as feminists by today’s standards and held on to many of the conventional beliefs about women’s role in society.10

Although women would write for the stage in greater numbers and with greater success during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they also faced formidable obstacles, not all of which applied to their male counterparts. The professional companies could be difficult to deal with, and in many cases women playwrights needed to use male intermediaries (noble patrons, family members, friends). Molière, in his capacity as director of a troupe, seems to have been an exception in that he was supportive of Villedieu and even advanced her money well before staging the premiere of her play Le Favori [The Favorite Minis-ter]. But the Comédie-Française, formed in 1680 as the official national company

10. For an insightful overview of the quarrel’s significance, see Larry F. Norman, The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). The principal polemical texts may be found in La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, ed. Anne-Marie Lecoq (Paris: Gallimard, 2001).

8 PERRY GETHNER

with a virtual monopoly in the capital, tended to treat young playwrights with little respect. For example, Catherine Bernard fought with the actors when they wanted to shorten the portion of the initial run of one of her tragedies when it was given alone (that is, without a comic afterpiece). Mme Ulrich got her comedy accepted but, apparently because it had been revised by a member of the troupe (who was an acclaimed dramatist in his own right), she was denied the usual privilege of free admission to performances. Due to the standard view that public notoriety undermined a woman’s reputation for modesty, there was often pressure on women playwrights to have their works staged or published anonymously. This pressure was especially severe for women of the aristocracy, since nobles were not supposed to engage in lucrative activities.

If getting plays staged was a challenge, so was getting them published. Ob-taining a privilege (official permission to publish a book) was complicated, and women writers often turned to male intermediaries, such as relatives, influential friends, or booksellers, to handle the process. Privileges, however, were deemed essential only for works printed in Paris; women who published elsewhere did not bother with them. After around 1670 it became somewhat more common, though still not the norm, for women authors to obtain privileges directly. Anoth-er troublesome question was whether to allow their names to appear on the title page or the privilege (all or part of which was typically printed with the volume). Many women, especially those of noble rank, preferred to designate themselves by the title Madame or Mademoiselle, followed by their initial(s). Although some preferred complete anonymity, others wanted to make it clear to the public that they were female. In a number of cases, a woman writer who began her career publishing anonymously would eventually allow her full name to be used. And, of course, there were problems shared with male writers, such as exploitation by publishers, pirated editions, false attributions, deliberate tampering with the text, and faulty presentation (especially if the author was not around to oversee the printing).11

Another constraint was the view, frequently expressed well into the twen-tieth century, that women, due to the inherent limitations of their gender, are incapable of cultivating the loftiest of literary forms. It was at least recognized that women could write with distinction in forms such as familiar letters, short verse, and fiction, where their greater emotional sensitivity and their instinctive cultiva-tion of a simple and “natural” style, unhampered by the standard formal educa-tion accorded to men, served them well. Of course, that same lack of education

11. See Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France, ed. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith and Dena Goodman (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Myriam Dufour-Maître, “Editer, imprimer, publier: Quelques stratégies féminines au XVIIe siècle,” in L’écrivain éditeur, volume 1: Du Moyen Âge à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, ed. François Bessire (Geneva: Droz, 2001), 257–76; Edwige Keller-Rahbé, “Pratiques et usages du privilège d’auteur chez Mme de Villedieu et quelques autres femmes de lettres du XVIIe siècle,” Œuvres et critiques 35, no. 1 (2010): 69–94.

9Introduction

was held against women who wanted to write in other areas. This prejudice led to the constant charge that women playwrights whose efforts were successful must have used male collaborators or, even worse, that the women had merely lent their names to male authors who preferred to remain hidden. The women playwrights expressed their outrage in a variety of ways. The most common was to compose prefaces to the published texts of their plays in which they objected to these charges as an attack on their reputation, competence, and integrity. In the final decade of the seventeenth century and the early decades of the next, a number of women playwrights organized the publication of their collected works, which was a particularly visible method of asserting authorial control and dignity.12

In this period, as has been noted, women playwrights cultivated every dra-matic form available. Although the current anthology includes examples of only three (tragedy, short comedy, and tragicomedy), women likewise composed works in other genres such as pastoral, farce, and tearful comedy. It is also remarkable that as a native French operatic tradition developed during the final decades of the seventeenth century, women got involved with it very quickly: during the 1690s both a female composer, Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, and a female librettist, Louise-Geneviève de Sainctonge, had works staged at the Opéra.13 However, it was in the two most prestigious dramatic genres, the ones going back to classi-cal antiquity, that the women authors most directly competed against their male counterparts, and it is in those areas (tragedy and comedy) that their originality can perhaps be most clearly demonstrated. (The hybrid genre of machine plays will be discussed in the introduction to Pascal’s Endymion.)

Tragedy

Between roughly 1630 and 1680 French authors created a distinctive new type of tragedy. It would gain acceptance from critics and audiences alike thanks to the appearance of a series of masterpieces, many of them written by Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. These tragedies maintained their popularity long after the death of their authors, and some of them have remained staples of the repertory to the present day. The hallmarks of the new tragedy included the following: a central

12. See Perry Gethner, “French Women Writers and Heroic Genres,” in Women Writing Back/Writing Women Back: Transnational Perspectives from the Late Middle Ages to the Dawn of the Modern Era, ed. Anke Gilleir, Alicia C. Montoya, and Suzan van Dijk (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 235–53; Gethner, “Stratégies de publication et notions de carrière chez les femmes dramaturges sous le règne du Roi Soleil,” in Le Parnasse du théâtre: Les recueils d’œuvres complètes de théâtre au XVIIe siècle, ed. Georges Forestier, Edric Caldicott, and Claude Bourqui (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2007), 309–23.

13. Sainctonge’s tragic opera libretti appear in an earlier volume of the Other Voice series: Dramatizing Dido, Circe, and Griselda, trans. Janet Levarie Smarr (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010).

10 PERRY GETHNER

role for love plots (absent in the tragedies of the ancient Greeks) that also generate internal conflicts in which love competes with other forms of obligation; empha-sis on the protagonists’ inner lives; little or no violent action shown on stage; a heroic world where protagonists are expected to embody such values as courage, selflessness, loyalty, lucidity, piety, and good manners; choice of historical subject matter but with emphasis on the elements of the story that are timeless, and thus featuring only a minimum of what would later be termed local color. Plays were expected to follow a long list of dramaturgical rules (see below), and to be mor-ally edifying (avoiding anything that could give offense to the political and reli-gious authorities). Apart from a few experiments with tragedies in prose, which were poorly received, tragedies were written in verse, which meant alexandrine (12-syllable) lines in rhyming couplets, and with strict adherence to the rules of versification codified during the Renaissance and seventeenth century. Plays were held to both dramatic and literary standards, able to satisfy both spectators in the theater and readers of the published text.

During the second quarter of the seventeenth century, French intellectu-als became consumed with debates over the rules governing drama. It was be-lieved that greatness in literature was largely dependent on rational criteria that were timeless and universal and could be codified. Among the rules that would be formally adopted by the French Academy, the most famous were the three unities of time, place, and action, plus verisimilitude and bienséances (decorum). In their strictest sense, which gained acceptance by around the midpoint of the century, the unities required that the time of the represented action last no more than twenty-four hours, that the play use a single set (no scene changes), and that the plot be perfectly unified (no subplots, no extraneous scenes or characters). Plausibility came to depend on conventional understanding of what constituted normal and proper behavior, though exceptions could be carved out for excep-tional occurrences derived from history or mythology. Decorum banished nearly all violent and unseemly actions from the spectator’s view, though they could hap-pen off stage and be recounted by a messenger. While it was primarily an aesthetic category (tying representation to what was appropriate for a given person, place, or circumstance), it was sometimes converted into a moral category, prohibiting anything that the public might deem too shocking or offensive. One clear example of this is Villedieu’s alteration of history for the denouement of Nitetis: instead of allowing Cambyses to contract an incestuous marriage with his sister, she has the evil king commit suicide before it can take place.

Much of the theoretical debate concerned the role of emotions in drama, and particularly in tragedy. The requirement, derived from Aristotle, to produce the feelings of pity and fear in the spectator came to be linked to the principle that the playwright should promote identification with the protagonists, concern for whose welfare could keep the audience anxious throughout the play. Once pity and

11Introduction

fear are not necessarily restricted to the play’s conclusion, it becomes acceptable to have happy endings in which the virtuous characters emerge victorious, while only the villains are killed off. This is the principle at work in plays like Nitetis; no one at the time would have questioned the label of tragedy that the author gave it. At the same time, Pierre Corneille pioneered a type of heroic tragedy in which the protagonist’s exceptional greatness of soul—an absolute devotion to principle ac-companied by little or no human weakness—would inspire primarily admiration in the viewer. Although in such plays admiration remains the dominant emotion, it does not preclude a substantial role for pathos. The title characters of Endymion and Nitetis were designed to provoke a similar response of pathos mixed with admiration, although the authors were far from following Corneille’s model in all respects. In a handful of cases, playwrights presented heroic figures who exercise their greatness in evil ways, thus showing that strength of will is not always tied to virtue, but they usually took pains to balance the evil protagonist with an example of conventional goodness, as is the case in Genseric. Finally, the authors of French tragedy gradually moved away from the ancient Greek emphasis on the role of Fate as an external force crushing the protagonists and over which they have little or no power. Characters tend to be fully conscious of their thoughts and emo-tions and spend much of their time in carefully reasoned deliberation, whether or not their actions turn out to be reasonable. In order to inspire admiration, they needed to be presented as active agents rather than passive victims.14

It would take a long time for women to try their hand at tragedy. Deemed the most prestigious branch of drama, it deserved, in the view of many people, to be cultivated only by men. In addition, some theorists felt that in order to write a proper tragedy, authors had to be well versed in the history and literature of clas-sical antiquity (held to be the greatest heroic age) and capable of understanding the heroic mentality. The breakthrough for women occurred in large part because of Cardinal Richelieu’s active support for the composition of tragedies based on religious themes, especially the glorious deaths of Christian martyrs. Because the type of heroism in such plays centered on passive endurance and profound reli-gious devotion, while not necessarily involving such staples of heroic tragedy as battles or statecraft, hagiographic subjects appealed strongly to women writers, and four of them published martyr plays, including the only French nun known to have composed a dramatic work. It is not clear whether any of those plays were performed, but they must have attracted some attention, because two were republished, and one of them garnered a laudatory poem from Pierre Corneille, the writer of the most esteemed of all French religious tragedies, Polyeucte.

14. For a discussion of the role of emotions in the dramatic theory and practice of the time, see Georges Forestier, Essai de génétique théâtrale: Corneille à l’œuvre (Geneva: Droz, 2004); Forestier, La Tragédie française: Passions tragiques et règles classiques (Paris: Armand Colin, 2010).

12 PERRY GETHNER

Although the total number of tragedies produced by French women during the second half of the seventeenth century is small (nine, counting two plays la-beled as tragicomedies but which are closer to tragedy), the corpus is by no means negligible. Five were staged professionally in Paris, two of them were revived, and another had an unusually successful initial run. Although none of these plays ap-peared separately in more than one edition, those of Villedieu and Deshoulières would be included in posthumous collections of their complete works (and they were among the first French women to gain this type of authorial recognition). Marie-Anne Barbier, a prolific playwright from the first quarter of the eighteenth century, was apparently the first to boast of belonging to a respected tradition of women writers in various genres that included Catherine Bernard, whose acclaim as a writer of tragedies helped to inspire her.15

One of the most innovative features of these tragedies is the way female characters are portrayed. The heroic woman, or femme forte, who had been some-thing of a staple in French literature during the first half of the seventeenth cen-tury, faded from prominence in the decades following. This was due to a number of factors: displeasure with the prominent role of powerful aristocratic women during the mid-century civil war, known as the Fronde; dissatisfaction with the performance of the two queen mothers who had served as regents for much of the first half of the century (Maria de’ Medici and Anne of Austria); and the authoritarian persona adopted by Louis XIV, who constantly compared himself to the sun and took care to emphasize his manly attributes. Henceforth, male playwrights tended to portray reigning queens in a mainly negative light: not fully competent, impetuous, violent, blinded by passions such as love or jealousy, prone to let personal feelings override concern for justice and political expediency. Some of the older queens in these plays hold on to their power only by murdering their children or grandchildren. Women playwrights, on the other hand, took a more favorable view of female rulers, portraying them as intelligent, energetic, capable of resolute action, and unwilling to be bossed around by arrogant and tyrannical men. The title character in Bernard’s Laodamie (1737; performed 1689) stands out as a positive role model, displaying political astuteness and courage, and she manages to control her amorous feelings in order to do what is right for her coun-try.16 Her sole limitation, which leads to her downfall, is that she is not a warrior and finds herself forced to depend on a male hero. The empress in Deshoulières’s Genseric (1680), though a captive detained in a foreign land, retains her indomi-table spirit and helps to plan an escape attempt, which ultimately fails.

15. This statement occurs in the preface to her tragedy Arrie et Pétus (1702). There is a translation of that work and of Bernard’s Laodamie in The Lunatic Lover, trans. Gethner.

16. Unless otherwise specified, dates of plays given in parentheses refer to the first published edition. If that date is considerably later than the date of first performance, that fact is noted.

13Introduction

The shift in popular taste led playwrights to abandon the portrayal of capa-ble female rulers and also women warriors. The rare attempts by male dramatists to showcase female fighters, such as Thomas Corneille’s Bradamante (1696), were poorly received, and the same fate awaited those female dramatists of the follow-ing century who went further and dared present warriors who were at the same time reigning queens: Barbier’s Tomyris (1707), Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez’s Marsidie (1724), Anne-Marie Du Boccage’s Les Amazones [The Amazons] (1749). On the other hand, female protagonists were allowed to exercise considerable po-litical influence behind the scenes, by giving advice or admonition to male lead-ers, or by encouraging the activities of men who love them. Villedieu’s Manlius (1662) and Nitetis (1663) and Bernard’s Brutus (1691) provide good examples of this attenuated version of the strong-willed woman. In the first decade of the next century, Barbier would present a heroine who organizes a conspiracy that nearly succeeds, manipulating male politicians and generals while cleverly concealing her central role in the business (Arrie et Pétus [Arria and Paetus]), and another heroine who sets the political agenda for her politician sons and insists that they maintain their commitment to her populist ideology (Cornélie mère des Gracques [Cornelia Mother of the Gracchi], 1703).

Arguably the most overtly feminist component of tragedies by women is the debunking of standard models of male heroism. What has been termed the “demolition of the hero” during the second half of the seventeenth century relates to various political, social, and religious factors, but it is also possible to locate a gender-related component.17 The key sociopolitical factor was the deliberate re-duction in the power of the traditional nobility at the expense of an increasingly absolutist monarchy, whose bureaucracy consisted largely of people recruited from the bourgeoisie. The ethos of the long-established aristocracy (known as the “sword nobility”) was a code based on personal and family honor, eagerness to pursue glory, need to present an ostentatiously grand appearance, overweening pride and courage, and resistance to other forms of authority. But that code came to be perceived as a survival of feudalism out of step with modern notions of a well-run nation state. The religious factor was the realization that the noble ethos was in many respects incompatible with Christian values. Discomfort with the exaltation of the heroic ideal was especially strong among those affiliated with a religious movement known as Jansenism, which held an extremely pessimistic view of human nature influenced by St. Augustine. Jansenists emphasized the fallen state of humans who are in constant need of divine grace, favored a turning

17. The phrase “demolition of the hero” was coined by Paul Bénichou in his influential study Morales du grand siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), and it has been explored in a large number of studies, es-pecially monographs devoted to Corneille or Racine. See, for example, Serge Doubrovsky, Corneille et la dialectique du héros (Paris: Gallimard, 1963); André Stegmann, L’Héroïsme cornélien, genèse et signification, 2 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968).

14 PERRY GETHNER

away from worldly activities so as to focus on service to God, and questioned the view that humans could accomplish great things purely by their own efforts. Moralist writers, many of them influenced by Jansenist ideas, wrote scathingly of the vanity of most human pursuits, debunked supposedly virtuous or glorious actions (often performed for inglorious reasons), and argued that most people most of the time are incapable of true self-knowledge, thus being unaware of their basic wretchedness.

In the hands of women writers, these anti-heroic views could take on a par-ticularly anti-male cast. French tragedy, especially that of Pierre Corneille, had relied heavily on ancient Rome to provide a model of ultimate heroic stature. But women playwrights treating Roman history tended to adopt the opposite per-spective: even if the heroic ideal was at times fully realized and remains worthy of our admiration, on far too many occasions supposedly great Roman leaders failed to live up to their principles. As a result, the women authors often chose male characters who are seriously flawed or even totally contemptible or villain-ous. Guilty of bad judgment, prejudice, hypocrisy, even cowardice, those leaders discredit Rome and, by extension, the model of French heroic tragedy. The first example of this phenomenon is the negative portrayal of the distinguished gen-eral Torquatus in Villedieu’s Manlius. Significantly, the playwright alters history to provide a happy ending: Torquatus, after having disgraced himself by various acts of misconduct, experiences a spiritual conversion in the final scene, pardons his son, renounces his unworthy passion for a captive princess, agrees to a politically necessary marriage for himself, and reaffirms his commitment to proper Roman values. The title character in Bernard’s Brutus, far from being the supreme model of Roman patriotic fervor and self-sacrifice, is shown as a conflicted, irresolute leader who believes that the senate is forcing him to issue an unjust death sen-tence on his elder son and who finally sinks into disillusionment and despair. Women playwrights were not alone in selecting odious leaders from antiquity as their protagonists, but they provide some of the most memorable examples, in-cluding such non-Roman tyrants as Cambyses (in Nitetis) and the title character in Genseric. However, not all the women playwrights followed Villedieu’s lead in providing happy endings where the tyrant reforms or is killed. In most other cases the virtuous characters die, albeit nobly, leaving the villainous leaders in power and only slightly (and presumably only temporarily) punished by the loss of a loved one.

Another key innovation by women playwrights was the emphasis on genu-ine friendship between women. Male writers, following a misogynistic tradition going back to antiquity, automatically assumed that women are incapable of having reasonable and moderate relationships, unable to resist violent passions such as love, hatred, and jealousy. Male playwrights like Corneille and Racine, in tragedies with more than one female protagonist, tend to make them rivals in love

15Introduction

who hate and sometimes try to destroy one another. Even in plays in which the women are not rivals and ought to form an alliance, they generally fail to do so and treat one another with sarcasm and scorn. Women writers, on the other hand, sometimes show female characters who care deeply about one another, are willing to make sacrifices to ensure the other’s welfare, and always give what they believe to be good advice. Even when they discover that they are rivals in love, their bond with each other remains firm. However, more often than not female friendships highlight the pathos in the situation of women who are powerless victims; only rarely does the friendship involve women of heroic stature who join forces in a common cause.18

Comedy

Because the number of comic plays composed by French women in this period is likewise very small, it is hard to generalize about their contribution to that dra-matic genre. Although it can hardly measure up to the remarkable achievements of English women playwrights during the Restoration period, whose work tends to be far more daring and at times overtly protofeminist, the corpus does contain undeniable elements of satire, making occasional comments on the unjust treat-ment of women and featuring proper and improper role models.

The French women authors’ most significant contribution came in the do-main of the one-act play. While the farce, a late medieval form of comedy, had fallen into disfavor with critics because of its frequent reliance on vulgar language, crude physical humor, demeaning treatment of women, and morally questionable endings, audiences still enjoyed it, and the genre would persist in a somewhat sanitized version. Several women would compose works in that genre, including the only professional actress of the century known to have written an original play, Mlle Longchamp (Le Voleur [The Thief], lost, performed 1687). However, around the middle of the seventeenth century, a new brand of one-act comedy developed in which all the objectionable features of farce were eliminated. These works are miniature comedies of manners, typically featuring characters drawn from the aristocracy and the upper bourgeoisie. Since during the third quarter of the century the practice of using afterpieces (short comedies performed following a full-length play) became the norm for Parisian theatrical companies, an increas-ing number of playwrights cultivated them. Short comedies were particularly ap-pealing to novice playwrights, because they are far less complicated to write than

18. For a fuller discussion, see Perry Gethner, “Female Friendships in Plays by Women Writers,” Cahiers du dix-septième 12, no. 2 (2009): 31–41; Gethner, “Reinterpreting the Griselda Legend: Sainctonge versus Perrault,” Women in French Studies (special issue, 2008): 48–57. As these studies show, the phenomenon of friendship between women is not limited to tragedy; examples are also found in comedy and tearful comedy or melodrama.

16 PERRY GETHNER

full-length plays: they utilize a small number of characters who are little more than stereotypes, have a minimal plot, focus on short humorous scenes, and rely on caricature and implausibility.

The first female practitioner of this form, Françoise Pascal, centered her short plays on the foibles of delusional members of salon society who fail to grasp the difference between real life and the world of novels and mythology. Her L’Amoureux extravagant [The Lunatic Lover] (1657) makes fun of a well-meaning but untalented and silly male poet, whose failures in the areas of poetic composition and love are exploited by a more intelligent group of friends and their servants.19 In L’Amoureuse vaine et ridicule [The Vain and Ridiculous Lady in Love] (1657), Clorinde, a woman in her thirties, imagines that she is an irresist-ibly beautiful teenager and that every man who sees her is secretly in love with her. Although her folly is publicly exposed through a practical joke played on her by two teenaged girls who live nearby, in collusion with their fiancés, Clorinde remains firmly locked in her dream world at the end of the play, never realiz-ing how she has been ridiculed. One-act plays of this type, since they require a small cast and a minimal stage set, could be performed by amateurs as well as by professionals. They are entertaining, without being offensive to either sex or to members of any social class or profession. Even when Pascal returned to the more traditional farce in her last comedy, Le Vieillard amoureux [The Old Man in Love] (1664), which was intended for a Parisian troupe that still employed specialists in farce, she added several personal touches: husbands who mistreat their wives are sharply castigated, and there is a brief moment of pathos when the old man real-izes that he must forgive the young lovers and everyone bursts into tears.

As the century came to a close, a new generation of male playwrights culti-vated a more cynical brand of comedy that highlighted the rise of a new class of fi-nanciers, with a concomitant emphasis placed on greed and social climbing, to the detriment of the traditional social hierarchy and conventional moral standards. These authors also took a far less rosy view of marriage, with more attention paid to the sometimes sordid negotiations that lead up to it and to the lack of harmony between spouses, who often hope to see their union terminated. The women play-wrights of that generation tended to share that cynicism and could be as daring as the men in denouncing social ills. Mme Ulrich’s La Folle enchère [The Crazy Auc-tion] (1691) turns the metaphor of the marriage market into literal reality. Two rich and vain women, both middle-aged, compete in financial pledges to secure the hand of a handsome young man whose greedy father proposes to sell him to the highest bidder. Following what the characters themselves term an auction, the loser takes her revenge by abducting the coveted groom. Ulrich adds an extra lay-er of subversion by showing that young women, subject to tight parental control, are the principal victims of such transactions: the handsome young man is really a

19. This play is included in The Lunatic Lover, trans. Gethner.

17Introduction

young woman in disguise, while the tyrannical father and one of the middle-aged rivals are really disguised valets. However scandalous, the plot reflects the mores of the era, while nodding in the direction of conventional comic resolution, since the elaborate deception is perpetrated in order to unite two young people from good families who genuinely love each other. Sainctonge’s L’Intrigue des concerts [The Intrigue at the Concert] (1714, but probably composed around 1695) shows the difficulties faced by a young woman who is trying to earn an honest living as a professional singer, and it also exposes an unscrupulous banker, appropriately named La Richardière, who in addition to his financial dishonesty maintains a scandalous private life, constantly seducing and impregnating his female servants. Again, the cynicism is not total, for the banker’s stepson, likewise a financier, is an honorable young man who sincerely loves the heroine. Although the young lovers are finally united, the song that concludes the play reminds the audience that nowadays success in love depends primarily on wealth.

The same disenchanted view of society would become even more prominent in comedies intended for private theatricals rather than the public playhouse. One of the most popular types of such short comedy is the dramatic proverb, which started as a parlor game akin to charades. It is a short play illustrating a well-known proverb but without mentioning that proverb in the text; the audience has to guess. The first authors to refine the proverb play from an improvised sketch into a literary form, to be written down and published, were two women, Hen-riette-Julie de Murat and Catherine Durand. Freed from the constraints of the public playhouse, where censorship was becoming increasingly rigid, they dared to present a variety of subversive and risqué situations, which allowed for some protofeminist comments. We see young aristocratic men who are hopelessly inept socially or even mentally deficient, debauched youths who treat their girlfriends with not the slightest bit of respect or decency, callous husbands who flaunt their mistresses in front of their wives, and shallow fops who try to court several dif-ferent women at the same time, not realizing that the women are capable of using the same tactics against them. Some of the women are equally willing to violate the codes of morality and propriety. A wronged wife takes a lover and fearlessly confronts her husband; two teenaged girls sneak out to an all-night party to expe-rience the pleasures accorded to adult women; a girl abandoned by her parents on a dreary country estate for no apparent reason becomes so angry at her confine-ment that she resolves to take a handsome peasant youth as her lover. In some cases the emancipated women manage to prevail.

Finally, mention should be made of a form of comedy that died out when it was overtaken by opera: comedy-ballet (spoken comedy with totally sung pro-logue, epilogue, and interludes). These works, very expensive to produce, were usually royal commissions, as was the case with the lone example written by a woman—King Charles II of England, an avid Francophile, called upon a French

18 PERRY GETHNER

Huguenot expatriate living in London, Anne de La Roche-Guilhen, to compose a hybrid play to celebrate his birthday in 1677. Rare-en-tout [All-Wondrous], La Roche-Guilhen’s sole work for the stage, contains much political, literary, and mu-sical satire, as well as some protofeminist elements: the title character, a lady’s man who falls in and out of love with astonishing rapidity, is humiliated, though not daunted by his misadventures; praise is accorded to accomplished female singers, whether amateur or professional; and the shepherds and nymphs in the allegori-cal interludes do not hesitate to criticize satyrs and fickle lovers for their lack of refinement and honesty.20

Tragicomedy

The intermediate genre of tragicomedy enjoyed exceptional popularity in France between roughly 1620 and 1660.21 In its most common form, the plot is fictional, often derived from well-known novels, and centers around the adventures of young lovers. The obstacles tend to arise from external forces, such as hostile parents, unscrupulous rivals, natural disasters, wars, or political intrigues. Since new obstacles may arise unexpectedly during the course of the play, the action is episodic and not always properly unified. The characters are mostly undevel-oped, often simply divided into heroes and villains, and poetic justice is normally observed at the conclusion (the good characters are rewarded and the bad ones appropriately punished). The reliance on surprises, suspense, and constantly re-newed challenges reinforces a feeling of life as dangerously unstable and filled with uncertainties. But surprises may be favorable as well as unfavorable, and in all but a handful of cases there is a happy ending. Despite the impression given by the name, probably fewer than half the tragicomedies contain comic characters or episodes, or feature characters taken from differing social ranks.

There are a number of reasons why tragicomedy fell out of favor during the second half of the seventeenth century. Perhaps the most important was the accep-tance of the three unities. Tragicomic plots seemed even more unbelievable when a large number of actions had to be squeezed into a single day and a single place. In addition, critics and audiences came to recognize the principle that tragedies were allowed to have happy endings (there are examples of this among the ancient Greeks), making some critics question whether a separate genre of tragicomedy was needed. Starting with the second quarter of the century, tragedies increas-ingly featured love plots, though these had to be carefully intertwined with more serious concerns, such as politics or religion; once again, tragedy appropriated an

20. This play is included in The Lunatic Lover, trans. Gethner.

21. The best general studies of French tragicomedy from this period are Hélène Baby, La Tragi-comédie de Corneille à Quinault (Paris: Klincksieck, 2001); and Roger Guichemerre, La Tragi-comédie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981).

19Introduction

element that had been crucial to the success of the intermediate genre. Finally, French critics adopted a new principle, the unity of tone, which banned the use of overly serious elements in a comedy or of comic elements in a tragedy; this innovation likewise undermined the legitimacy of tragicomedy.

Since the genre was in decline when women playwrights started to become a significant presence, it is not surprising that women composed few works in that form, and none at all after 1665. However, Françoise Pascal managed to produce some genuinely innovative tragicomedies. Her Agathonphile (1655) combines a stock tragicomic love plot with a Christian martyr scenario, while Endymion (1657) combines an atypical love plot (a romance between a human and a god-dess) with a surprising variant of the play-within-a-play device (much of the ac-tion turns out in retrospect to have occurred within a magically induced dream). Endymion is also a rare example of a tragicomedy that is also a machine play (see the introduction to that play). All three of her tragicomedies also have feminist touches: the heroines are far more active and energetic than their male counter-parts, and in Endymion we encounter a version of polytheism in which Diana is worshiped as the most powerful deity. The two plays that Villedieu labeled as tragicomedies also contain feminist touches, but there is nothing formally in-novative about them. Manlius is really a tragedy with a happy ending, while Le Favori is really a comedy featuring characters of very high rank.

Note on the Translations

I have tried to make these translations as readable and as stageworthy as possible. I have followed the common practice of rendering alexandrine lines in rhyming couplets as iambic pentameter in blank verse. For verse plays, I have kept exactly the same number of lines as in the original. My English verse is not perfectly regular, though I hardly take more liberties than English blank-verse plays of the Restoration period. I have avoided archaic or stilted grammar and vocabulary, while trying to make the tragedies sound slightly more elevated in tone than ordi-nary colloquial speech. Elaborate poetic devices that would confuse the modern English reader have been simplified (for example, the personification of abstrac-tions and of body parts, or the ubiquitous use of terms like “fire” or “irons” to designate amorous passion).

The inconsistency in the rendering of proper names is intentional. For names derived from classical history or mythology, I have used the standard Eng-lish form. For invented characters for whose names I could find no English equiv-alent, I have retained the French form. For obviously parodic names (Pedanta and Formont [strong mountain] in Durand’s eighth proverb comedy), I again keep the French forms, since their meaning should be easily grasped. In verse plays, for the

20 PERRY GETHNER

sake of prosody, I normally drop the possessive “s” for names that end in “s” (e.g., Venus’ rather than Venus’s, Atlas’ rather than Atlas’s).

In accordance with the conventions of English-language drama, I have eliminated the divisions of acts into scenes, because the term scene in traditional French usage referred not to a change of decor (banned during the period when these plays were written) but rather to the entrances or exits of characters. In all such cases I have indicated those entrances and exits with stage directions. In a number of cases, I have added stage directions to clarify the action for the reader; these are indicated in brackets, whereas the stage directions in the original texts are indicated in parentheses.

Translations of sources cited in the notes to the plays are my own unless otherwise indicated.

1 Plays by French Women Front Matter2 Plays by French Women Introduction3 Plays by French Women Pascal4 Plays by French Women Villedieu5 Plays by French Women Deshoulieres6 Plays by French Women Durand7 Plays by French Women Bibliography8 Plays by French Women Index